Standard surgical procedures, such as resection, for treating various maladies of different organs like the liver, kidney, and spleen that include such things such as tumors, injuries from trauma, and such have several key shortcomings. These shortcomings affect efficacy, morbidity and mortality to name a few. A fundamental issue for example is the inability to adequately control blood loss during the tissue transection.
In an attempt to help overcome this limitation various mono-polar and bi-polar RF devices have been created. These devices act as conduits to deliver energy from an RF generator. These devices include electrocautry pencils and probes of various types and configurations from a number of different manufactures such as Bovie, ValleyLab, and TissueLink. The algorithms currently used with these devices in surgical treatments typically provide a constant amount of delivered energy in which the power level and duration are directly controlled by the user. This approach suffers from fundamental flaws that limit their usefulness in a typical clinical setting.
The flaws associated with delivering a constant amount of energy to target tissue include an inability to automatically adjust to the correct level of energy delivery by properly responding to the condition of the tissue to be transected. After the initial application of energy to the target tissue the properties of the tissue begin to change. With these changes the application of energy should also change in order to maintain an optimum energy application. The typical methods of delivering hemostatic energy to the target tissue are ill-suited because they rely on the user to adjust the energy delivery with little or no information or guidance as to the changing state of the target tissue. As a result the ultimate amount or duration of delivered energy maybe insufficient for creating hemostasis.
Furthermore, the typical energy delivery systems rely on the user to set the initial level of energy delivery with little or no relevant information of the condition of the target tissue being treated. Therefore, when using the typical energy delivery systems, the initial application of energy can be significantly lower or higher than what is needed. When an inadequate amount of energy is applied to the target tissue, a haemostatic tissue effect is not achieved. Likewise, if the duration of the energy application is too short, proper hemostasis will not be achieved. When an excessively high amount of energy is applied to the target tissue the result can be carbonization of the target tissue. This carbonization can prevent the continued flow of delivered energy to the tissue; it also often creates an overly superficial depth of treated tissue resulting in poor hemostasis.